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Dessert

Sweet Wafers

Thin sweet wafers made by cooking batter in heated wafer irons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Sweet Wafers

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Preheat the wafer irons.

  2. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  3. Add the beaten eggs and mix well.

  4. Stir in the flour until fully combined, then add nutmeg.

Cook the wafers

  1. Grease both sides of the heated wafer irons with butter.

  2. Drop a teaspoonful of batter in the center of the iron.

  3. Close the iron and cook until golden brown.

  4. Open the iron and, while hot, roll the wafer using a knife and fork.

Finish

  1. Place the rolled wafers on a platter to harden.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter and add moisture and structure as they set.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the wafers crisp and brown.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and promotes golden browning in the iron.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the thin wafers together.

The step that matters

Rolling the wafer while hot. The wafer is pliable only while it is still hot. As it cools, the butter and sugar set and it becomes brittle, so it must be rolled quickly after opening the iron.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, butter, sugar, flour):

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Jalapenofits less well
  4. Capersfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, sugar, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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